City of Portland
tries to pry concessions from workers, including overtime

By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

Leaders of the 1,800-member District Council of Trade Unions (DCTU)
say the City of Portland is trying to use tough times in the economy
to extract contract concessions that have nothing to do with the
city’s finances. The seven-union DCTU is the city’s
largest union bargaining group. Its previous two-year contract expired
June 30, and was extended by mutual agreement.

Other local governments, losing revenues in the recession, have
gotten public employee unions to agree to one or two year wage freezes.
The City is asking for the same, but is also proposing to eliminate
cherished union gains like the eight-hour day and protections against
contracting out members’ jobs.

DCTU spokesperson Cherry Harris said the City wants to “gut”
provisions that limit privatizing members’ jobs. Earlier this
year, an arbitrator ordered the City to pay over $200,000 to parking
meter technicians whose work was given to outside contractors —
in violation of the DCTU contract. The DCTU contract requires the
City to notify a union when it’s going to contract out work
that would be done by members. The City must give union members
a chance to bid on the work. The agreement also says the city can’t
contract out unless it saves money by doing so, and the savings
can’t come from the private sector workers getting lower pay
and benefits.

Meanwhile, two City Council members — Dan Saltzman and Amanda
Fritz — have pressed for changes to union contract overtime
rules, which go further than the minimum required under federal
law. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires “time-and-a-half”
pay after employees work 40 hours in a week, but some state laws
and union contracts go beyond that. The DCTU contract requires overtime
pay for all hours beyond eight hours in a day.

City negotiators also proposed a freeze in step pay increases, limits
on union access to members, a change to comp time rules, and making
members pay the full cost if their adult children stay on the employer
health plan, as they will have the right to do under the new federal
health care law.

“It’s frustrating to have an employer that says they
have an economic problem but then brings all this other crap to
the [bargaining] table,” said Ken Allen, executive director
of Oregon AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees). AFSCME Local 189, with 1,200 members, is the DCTU’s
largest union local.

Saltzman and Fritz have said they seek the overtime change in order
to end the practice of workers taking sick leave and then working
overtime to get caught up in their work. They made that argument
when a smaller contract — covering 90 members of Laborers
Local 483 employed in Parks & Recreation — came up for
approval last month. Usually, labor agreements negotiated by the
City human resources department are ratified without debate as part
of the City Council’s “consent agenda.” But Saltzman
and Fritz raised their objections, which delayed approval of the
contract.

“It made public employees look bad, like we’re getting
something for nothing,” said Local 483 Business Manager Richard
Beetle.

For City Council to reject a union contract over issues that were
not raised during bargaining would be an unfair labor practice under
the state’s Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act, Beetle
said; Council ratified the contract at its next meeting. But the
City is proposing the overtime change in the DCTU bargaining still
under way.

If there are concerns about sick leave abuse and excess overtime,
union leaders say, managers can already address that. They can require
doctors notes, and can choose not to allow overtime. Beetle said
he made that point in a meeting with Fritz.

“I said ‘You’ve overstaffed your management ranks,
so you’ve got plenty of them, and you pay your managers good
money. If you can’t ask them to do something as basic as manage
a 37-year-old sick leave policy, you need to look at your management
and say, what are we buying here?’ ”

“We think you ought to staff your work areas correctly and
manage your hours so that you don’t have to work people overtime,”
Beetle said.

When the DCTU negotiations first began, the two sides used an “interest-based”
bargaining framework that supposes that the parties are on the same
side. That proved untenable, and bargaining reverted to the more
traditional adversarial style. At that point, City negotiators proposed
lots of changes to the contract, most of which union negotiators
found unacceptable. As of press time, the City had backed off some
of the objectionable proposals, and the two sides were trading comprehensive
settlement offers.

The City has reached two-year agreements with four other bargaining
units so far this year: The Laborers unit at Parks & Rec, an
AFSCME unit at Bureau of Emergency Communications, and contracts
with the City of Portland Professional Employees Association (COPPEA)
and the Portland Fire Fighters. All those contracts contained cost-of-living
freezes, but no other takeaways.

DCTU leaders say they could accept a one- or two-year halt to cost
of living increases, but not the overtime and privatization changes.

The DCTU includes members of AFSCME Local 189, Laborers Local 483,
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 48, Machinists
Local 1005, Operating Engineers Local 701, Painters District Council
5, and Plumbers Local 290.